Posts in
December 2007

While many impoverished American families are shivering in the winter cold for lack of money to pay the oil baron their exorbitant price for home heating oil, ex-oil man, George W. Bush sleeps in a warm White House and relishes his defeat of the Congressional attempt to get rid of $15 billion in unconscionable tax...Continue reading 'Nader: Big Oil’s Profit and Plunder'.

The EU has caved in to another powerful industry. EU ministers have finally agreed to impose carbon emissions quotas on airlines in an attempt to fight climate change. However, the start date for the EU emissions trading scheme will be delayed to 2012, a year later than MEPs were asking for. The scheme also faces...Continue reading 'Another industry off the hook…'.

Happy Christmas Alaska. Exxon’s present to those desperate for compensation from the Exxon Valdez oil spill is its new defence in the U.S. Supreme Court that the $2.5 billion verdict the company was ordered to pay conflicts with more than 200 years of maritime law. Exxon is now arguing that trial and appellate courts erred...Continue reading 'Exxon’s Xmas Gift to Alaska'.

Platform, the oil industry watchdog, is today publishing a report that argues that Kazakhstan is missing out on up to $20bn of revenues over the next decade as a result of the problems at the vast Kashagan oilfield. Kazakhstan agreed surprisingly generous terms in its 1997 contract with international oil companies for developing the field,...Continue reading 'Kazakhstan Renegotiates Oil Deal'.

Auto makers finally face higher fuel efficiency standards in the US. Sort of. After years of holding out against anything to do with climate change, President George Bush finally signed into law an energy bill establishing higher fuel-economy standards for new cars and other conservation measures. And then 8 hours later he completely sabotaged states...Continue reading 'Eight hours and 180 degrees'.

The European car industry has pledged to fight the already watered-down plans to reduce CO2 from new cars. Leading the fight will be the Germans and their powerful car industry, which is dominated by gas-guzzling cars like BMW, Porsches and Mercedes-Benz. Even the country’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has opposed the plans saying they were “not...Continue reading 'Car Industry to Fight EU CO2 Plans'.

Another day, another oil spill, this time on an Alaskan pipeline. Alaska officials are investigating the cause of a pipeline rupture on the North Slope earlier this week that they say could be a sign of more widespread corrosion problems at the state’s aging fields.

Sod the climate, let’s back to business as usual, including the Arctic oil rush. Its Iceland’s turn now. The country is going to offer companies exclusive oil and gas exploration licences in the Dreki area of the north Atlantic. The area lies to the northeast of Iceland, between it and the Arctic island of Jan...Continue reading 'Iceland Opens Up New Arctic Oil Front'.

This is getting silly. There has been yet another oil spill. Rescuers are trying to contain an oil slick from a small tanker that capsized at a port in central Indonesia yesterday, after it was loaded up with more than 4,000 barrels of fuel. It is not immediately clear how much oil had leaked from...Continue reading 'Another Oil Spill – This Time in Indonesia'.

More fall out from Bali, this time as an op-ed in the New York Times. The paper’s foreign affairs columnist, Thomas Friedman, writes: “As readers of this column know, I have a rule that there is a simple way to test whether any Arab-Israeli peace deal is real or not: If you need a Middle...Continue reading 'Friedman on Bali: “What Was That All About?”'.